Entering addiction rehab not only affects your emotional, mental and physical states, but also can have a large impact on your social life. Because many addiction treatment centres are inpatient, the physical separation from friends can cause a shift in your friendship, or at least test its strength.
Before recovery, many addicts’ social lives revolve around friends who also abuse substances and alcohol. When you enter an addiction treatment centre then, this bond that is based entirely on addiction quickly dissolves. But unlike other friendships changes, this one is certainly in the best interest of your health and addiction recovery.
Other friendships, though healthy and not centred on substance or alcohol abuse, may undergo changes. As a recovering addict in an addiction treatment centre you are in a constant process of self-improvement, both physical and mental. Your own betterment may cause friends, addicts or otherwise, to hold a mirror to their own lives, and to take note of their faults and the behaviours they could improve.
As a consequence, they may feel that your newly rejuvenated mental health will cause you to preach to them about their own lives, and they could take a defensive tone when you confide in them about your life in addiction rehab.
Regardless, it is imperative to understand that life is a constant process of self-evaluation, and whether or not one is struggling with addiction and in an addiction treatment centre or not, there is always the opportunity to be re-evaluating your life. Those friends who fall to the wayside may need time to step back into self-reflection, and to learn that comparing themselves to your own process of self-evaluation is helpful to no one.
